The Early Intervention team conducted Aitch’s assessment yesterday. Conditions were perfect: Aitch had had a full night’s uninterrupted sleep, woke up in a good mood, and ate a decent breakfast. Apart from a little initial hesitancy, he behaved pretty much as he always does, in total violation of the Heisenberg principle.

A squad of three evaluators–an occupational therapist, an early childhood specialist, and a gross-motor expert–put Aitch through his paces in two sessions, one in his high chair and one on the floor. During the seated period, Husband and I were touched to see Aitch concentrating on the given tasks so thoroughly. I had imagined that the testers would allow him to play freely and make observations on actions whenever they happened to occur, but instead they proceeded down their checklists, giving him first one activity, then taking it away and substituting another. We had no idea he was capable of such focus.

Aitch surprised us with some of his skills. He imitated the occupational therapist as she made a “train” with three blocks, and then built a tower five blocks high (typically, he knocks down any structure that rises above sea level). He stuck six pegs upright into a wooden board and then asked to do it again. He had a bit more trouble with a puzzle, but correctly called a piece “big” when it wouldn’t fit into the shape, recalling an earlier conversation where I told him that one of his trains was “too big” to fit into a tunnel.

We were bemused to discover that Aitch is singularly incapable of sorting objects. In task after task, he failed to sort by shape, size, color, utility, chemical composition, or political affiliation. This clarifies the whole two mommies debacle — he can’t sort by gender either! He did much better on the gross motor portion, balancing on a board, running, spinning, and even dancing on command. They were a bit concerned about the muscle tone in his face, because of the copious drool, but I coaxed him to whistle and they chalked the drool up to teething.

Aitch’s “strengths,” they said, were his social and emotional skills, assessed at 7 months ahead of his age. Basically, this means that he is charming. This charm was one of my original concerns. Various checklists for attachment disorder, for which adopted children are considered at risk, cite “overfriendliness to strangers” as a potential indicator. The evaluators reassured us that, although friendly, Aitch appeared to be “checking in” with us appropriately before becoming too comfortable with them.

The Early Intervention team was extremely polite and professional, explaining the developmental milestones behind each activity and giving us lots of feedback on Aitch’s progress. Even more important were the things they didn’t do, to wit:

  • *They did not, by word, gesture, or telepathic thought, explicitly or implicitly criticize our parenting skills, housekeeping habits, or lifestyle. Can you imagine how difficult this must be for them? They visit dozens of homes each year; they see all the warning signs. Either we were perfect, or they were extraordinarily restrained. I expect they were yukking it up over a few mid-morning beers afterwards: “Great Jogging Jesus, did you see the size of those dust bunnies?”

  • *They did not roll their eyes when the gross-motor expert said that Aitch could not walk down stairs with someone holding one hand, and Husband and I lunged at her and said, “Of course he can! He can walk down shallow stairs by himself!” as though Aitch were being unfairly denied admission to Harvard due to her faulty assessment of his stair-descending skills.

  • *They did not make us feel like idiots for wasting their time, even though, as it turned out, Aitch did not qualify for services.

So there it is. Aitch is ready for the Early Intervention Toddler Pageant. He’ll excel in poise (board-balancing), talent (whistling), and congeniality (social and emotional). And he can so go down the damn stairs.